Day 14 – June 1, 2024 – Williams, AZ

Today was more of a leisurely day as we had nothing pressing until 11:30. We had a big breakfast and headed to the GC park about 9:30 as we wanted to be at the park by 10 a.m. With it being a Saturday, we knew the lines to get into the park might be bad as well as the parking. We waited in line maybe 15 minutes and then headed up to the General Store to grab a few things and sandwich to go.

We found a great parking spot and found some shade to eat our sandwich before we needed to meet for our mule ride at 11:30. We were given a “bladder bag” for lack of better term, to use for water. We all gathered at the meeting point, hopped in a couple of vans, and was driven to the mule shack.

We met Abby, Tiffany, and Taylor and were given the spiel on what to expect on the ride as well as instructions. Our guide was Tiffany, and she did a fantastic job! My mule’s name was Jay1 (not sure how they spelled it) and she was a female. John had Anders, which was a male. I somehow got stuck with the obese, slow female (lol!) that ended up having to go to the end of the line because I didn’t want to slap her to death with the motivator (a switch that doesn’t even phase them). She did better being at the end as they don’t like being left behind and even when John had to “motivate” Anders at times, Jay would pipe up and move along a little quicker. We walked along the rim for about 20 minutes then stopped for pics and went on a little further to the turning around point. Tiffany gave us some information about mules like:

Mules are generally sterile as they are bred from a female horse and a male donkey. They have an odd number of chromosomes, which makes them sterile.
They can go up to 3 days without water, though they don’t do that at the mule shack.
They follow each other without prodding as they work in packs, so it’s a natural thing for them. They are better mannered than horses or donkeys as well.

We were on the pack mules they usually use to take the trips down the canyon and were giving the regular mules a “vacation” as Tiffany stated. You don’t want the pack mules to get too lazy, so they use them when they are not going down into the canyon. The trail they use to go down, the Bright Angel (the one we went down yesterday) is having repairs so they are not doing the trip down with the pack mules.

Being at the end helped with Jay keeping up, but it also meant I caught most of the dust from the trail. It was still a fun trip. We arrived back from where we started, and a bus was there to take us back to the meeting point.

We headed back to the BNB and got cleaned up. I did a load of laundry while John started our dinner which was, grilled chicken breast, roasted zucchini, and rice. We ate outside and enjoyed our last night in Williams. It was a great trip, and we are looking forward to heading to Springdale, which is right near Zion National Park. Tomorrow will be a day on the road so a much-deserved down day!